My very heart wad surely break
When this I think upon,
Did not my courage singular

Bid pensive thoughts begone.

No man on earth that draweth breath
More courage had than I;
I dared my foes unto their face,
And would not from them fly.
This grandeur stout I did keep out,
Like Hector, manfullie;

Then wonder one like me so stout
Should hang upon a tree.

The Egyptian band I did command,
With courage more by far,
Than ever did a general

His soldiers in the war.

Being fear'd by all, both great and small, I lived most joyfullie:

Oh, curse upon this fate of mine,

To hang upon a tree!

As for my life, I do not care,
If justice would take place,
And bring my fellow-plunderers
Unto the same disgrace.
But Peter Brown, that notour loon,
Escap'd, and was made free:

Oh, curse upon this fate of mine,

To hang upon a tree!

S

Both law and justice buried are,
And fraud and guile succeed;
The guilty pass unpunished,
If money intercede.

The Laird of Grant, that Highland saunt,
His mighty majestie,

He pleads the cause of Peter Brown,
And lets Macpherson die.

The dest❜ny of my life contrived
By those whom I obliged,
Rewarded me much ill for good,
And left me no refuge.

For Braco Duff, in rage enough,
He first laid hands on me;
And if that death did not prevent,
Avenged would I be.

As for my life, it is but short,
When I shall be no more;
To part with life I am content,
As any heretofore.

Therefore, good people all, take heed,

This warning take by me,
According to the lives you lead,
Rewarded you shall be.

Macpherson was a noted freebooter, executed at Banff in 1700. He is said to have played this "rant" at the gallows, and then offered his fiddle to any Macpherson who would consent to play it again over his dead body; none came forward, so he threw it on the ground and crashed it to pieces under his fect.

CCIX.

MACPHERSON'S FAREWELL.

R. Burns.

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,
The wretch's destinie!
Macpherson's time will not be long
On yonder gallows tree.

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,

Sae dauntingly gaed he,

He play'd a spring, and danced it round,
Below the gallows tree!

Oh, what is death, but parting breath?
On mony a bluidy plain

I've daur'd his face, and in this place
I scorn him yet again.

Untie these bands frae aff my hands,
And bring to me my sword;
And there's no a man in all Scotland
But I'll brave him at a word.

I've lived a life of sturt and strife ;

I die by treacherie:

It burns my heart I must depart,

And not avenged be.

Now farewell, light, thou sunshine bright,

And all beneath the sky!

May coward shame distain his name,

The wretch that dares not die !

CCX.

ARMSTRONG'S GOOD-NIGHT.

O this is my departing time!

For here nae langer maun I stay:
There's not a friend or foe of mine
But wishes that I were away.

What I have done for lack o' wit,
I never, never can recall;
I hope you're a' my friends as yet:
Good-night and joy be wi' you all.

'These verses are said to have been composed by one of the Armstrongs, executed for the murder of Sir John Carmichael of Edrom, Warden of the Middle Marches. Whether these are the original words, will admit of a doubt.'-Scott.

This is one of the songs which so touched Goldsmith in his youth that nothing he heard sung in after years had an equal charm for him. "The music of the finest singer," he wrote in the Bee, October 13, 1759, "is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night, or the cruelty of Barbara Allen;" and in a letter to his Irish friend Hodson, December 27, 1757, he says, "If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for Lishoy's fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night from Peggy Golden.